♥♥ For MY SmexXxy HOT Brainy Space SCIENCE Geekette! ♥♥ The Milky Way is not an island universe, but a member of a small cluster of galaxies called the Local Group. (Illustration: NASA / CXC / M.

Astronomers have identified 18 extreme mass-ratio binaries in a neighboring galaxy called the Large Magellanic Cloud, pictured here. The more massive stars weigh six to 16 times as much as the Sun, while the less massive stars weigh about one to two times the Sun. We’ve caught them “in the delivery room,” since one star is fully formed while the other is still in its infancy.

Zeta Ophiuchus, a massive star plowing through the gas and dust floating in space. Zeta Oph is a bruiser, with 20 times the Sun’s mass. It’s an incredibly luminous star, blasting out light at a rate times higher than the Sun! Even at its distance of